Michael Kelley is a professional tech writer and content strategist with an app development background. He specializes in Android & iOS app design, as well as blockchain & dapp technology. Ever since he was a child, Michael was captivated by technology. When the opportunity arose to spend his life writing about it, Michael didn’t hesitate. He now spends his time exploring and writing about captivating new technologies to introduce to the people.

What do you love most about Your City?

The great food

Favorite breakfast meal & restaurant?

Local bagel store- sausage egg and cheese

What are you doing at:

6:00 AM – Getting up, scheduling for the day

10:00 AM - At work, getting my coffee

12:00 PM - Favorite Power Lunch spot/meal?

Whatever new craving comes for the day

7:00 PM - Working out at the gym

11: 00 PM - Sleeping, prepped for the next day

What drink do you need to get through the day and at the end (and how many)?

Coffee - 2 cups

Most used App/Favorite Instagram Account?

Google maps, I get lost easily

What should everyone try at least once?

Going out of your comfort zone

Where do you enjoy getting lost?

Manhattan as it’s so lively. Always something happening around the corner

The Role of Hyperledger in the Development of Smart Contract

Businesses constantly look to improve. A great part of that improvement is optimizing the costs-to-revenue ratio, which obviously favors revenue. Developing decentralized applications (dApps) with smart contracts opened exciting avenues for businesses. Blockchain developers are exploring this practical aspect the smart contract to create dApps that solve several issues current businesses struggle with: too many intermediaries, too much time, and too many conditions attached to executing a business transaction.

The sum of these issues comes down to spending too much money on completing business contracts. Expectedly, the solution would be to reduce most of the complicated aspects to do business in a more affordable way than ever before.

Different Paths of dApp Development

As with any new technology, there are several forks in the road of dApp development and not all blockchain developers take the same path. Many differences arise from the “open vs. closed” debate, also referred to as the ”permissioned vs. permissionless” debate.

Completely open and public blockchain networks are those in which anyone can participate without meeting any special criteria create additional problems for businesses. Poor scalability, or the inability to create fast transactions, is an important element of this problem. With so many new nodes being added to a dApp as the public blockchain network grows, it becomes incapable of competing with traditional payment processors, such as Visa, for example.

On the other hand, there are radical opinions that define cryptocurrency platforms, such as the Bitcoin as the only authentic blockchain network. Although it’s true that the blockchain was conceived with the idea to democratize transactions and make them less dependable to central authorities, opponents to completely open blockchain networks are criticizing their current inefficiency to solve the cost vs. benefit question.

Solving Scalability Issues with the Hyperledger

Hyperledger, the open-source platform established by the Linux Foundation has introduced a unique aspect of dApp development. The Hyperledger ecosystem is based on permissioned applications where partners join dApps by prior invitation.

The Hyperledger is different from other blockchain endeavors. It not only offers a dApp platform for creating practical solutions but it also provides a collaborative partnership and a unique smart contract technology as well as rich resources, such as plug-in tools and frameworks which a business can use in the process of dApp development. In the spirit of Linux, it also features a very active online community.

Despite the permissioned blockchain model, it’s important to keep in mind Hyperledger’s open-source software orientation, which means the platform offers its newly developed code to partners for free. Apart from the membership fee, there are no additional fees for licenses and royalties. In a way, seeing blockchains as completely open or partially open networks is similar to the conundrum associated with the different benefits of open-source and proprietary software.

The Specifics of Hyperledger Smart Contracts

Hyperledger is a revolutionary technology that sets up decentralized environments in which participants collaborate, execute transactions, and store value in smart contracts built with a specific blockchain technology called chaincode. Chaincode is developed by using the programming language Go, which is popularly known as Golang in dApp development communities. Without going too deep into technicalities, the benefits of joining the Hyperledger community are the following:

Open-source, flexible, and scalable dApp development platform.

Shared distributed ledger created on a permissioned network with access provided on a Membership Service Provider (MSP) principle.

Modular, pluggable smart contract components created with chaincode.

Private blockchains that support making confidential decisions in private business channels.

Based on a consensus mechanism between the participants who work toward a common goal without the need for applying the proof-of-work mechanism.

According to its main characteristics, the Hyperledger is developed more around the enterprise concept as it helps businesses integrate dApps into their current business systems. One of its tools, the Hyperledger Composer, can help participants build smart contract models in weeks instead of months because they don’t require solving complex computational problems to get access. When the mining is removed from the picture, the advantage of the Hyperledger model invariably comes down to not wasting blockchain developers’ time and computing resources. On the other hand, the membership is paid and based on a sliding scale, which depends on the company size and the existence of a previous Linux foundation membership.

Which of the different blockchain concepts will be most successful in solving current business issues remains to be seen. Hyperledger has a fair set of advantages and disadvantages that deserve careful consideration on behalf of the businesses interested in implementing them. If you are interested in starting dApp development on the Hyperledger, a full guide to the various type of memberships is available on the registration page.